Two weeks ago, India-based Tata Consultancy Services announced a $35 million gift to fund a facility on the Oakland campus. The donation will supplement a $150 million endowment for the Presidential Scholars and Fellows program, new to campus with 145 students this year.
Such partnerships, experts say, are mutually beneficial for companies and the institution. Ray Lane, a trustee who lives in California and spent much of his career in venture capital, said companies such Uber and TCS are drawn to CMU to have first dibs on its students and research.
“Corporations are reaching out to Carnegie Mellon saying, ‘We want to be close to the party,' ” Lane said. “These are companies trying to get an inside track on the graduates and intellectual property that gets developed at Carnegie Mellon.”
The TCS donation was the largest corporate donation in the university's history. The building won't be finished until 2018, officials said, but TCS staff will foster a presence on campus.
The partnership with Uber resulted in some top talent jumping from the university's payroll to the center; as many as 40 left. But the university has relationships with tech firms such as Google, which landed in Pittsburgh nine years ago. Such relationships help students connect to the world, CMU President Subra Suresh said.
“We have a great opportunity to make the technology available to a company like Google or Uber or TCS,” he said. “They can apply the technology on a global scale, which can change the day-to-day life of people around the world.”
John Taylor, a consultant with about 30 years experience in higher education, said many corporate donations come as software agreements or contracts. Cash gifts such as the TCS donation are rare, he said.
In 2014, 15 percent of voluntary donations to universities came from corporations, according to the Council for Aid in Education. Taylor said companies may give for brand recognition, tax benefits, or because of personal relationships with officials at the institution.
“This kind of publicity will help raise interest about what they do and how they do it,” he said. “There may be some self-serving interest in there.”
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said the company aims to make safe transportation “as reliable as running water.” he said.
“Carnegie Mellon University has proven the power of curiosity many times over with its groundbreaking research in computer science and robotics: research that has made self-driving cars possible,” Kalanick said in a statement. “So while it's still early days in our partnership, the potential to improve transportation — from safer cars to smarter cities — is immense.”
Suresh said the partnership helps the university to compete for students from around the globe. This year, about 20 percent of incoming students came from abroad. Those in the scholarship program represent Argentina, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, France, India, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Taiwan, Sri Lanka and the United States.
“We have a lot of competition for students from a lot of universities from around the world, including great American universities,” Suresh said. “For CMU to remain a major research university, we need to attract the best and brightest students.”
©2015 The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Greensburg, Pa.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
